Badgers and hedgehogs have had a great time feasting on slugs, snails and earthworms during this sodden summer, while water voles were in their element in the water and with plenty of plants to feed on, but they remain an endangered species.

However, many other small mammals faced a tough time. Numerous creatures were flooded out of their nests, and people reported wood mice scampering into their homes to escape the deluges that swamped the mice nests in the ground.

The dormouse has also had a bad year. This delightful little creature gets its name from the Latin verb dormire, meaning to sleep, because it spends half the year curled up hibernating or in torpor – a temporary hibernation – hence the sleepy dormouse in Alice in Wonderland.

In fact, Surrey Wildlife Trust actually filmed a snoring dormouse recently during a survey, which can be seen at http://bit.ly/tSqFb0. But the survey also revealed an alarming absence of baby dormice, after months of bad weather.

The dormice came out of hibernation early in the unusually hot March, but then faced a cold, wet late spring with few flowers to feed on for pollen. They went back into hibernation, and stayed asleep in July, which is unheard of, when they should be breeding. The hope now is that the wild berries, nuts and fungi this autumn will give the adults a chance to fatten up ready for their return to hibernation in a month or two.